


It's Just You and I and This TV

by secretspeller



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Caretaking, Friendship, Gen, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:40:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5849011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretspeller/pseuds/secretspeller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Nick couldn’t imagine Louis, in all his lionhearted prickly-mischievous pop-stardom, as the object of worry, but Harry sounded genuinely concerned so Nick gave in. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll look in on him after the show.”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just You and I and This TV

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madsuptonogood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsuptonogood/gifts).



> One slightly syrupy cuddly sick fic, special delivery for Madsuptonogood
> 
> Thanks to Paperlanterns for an early beta of this. Any horrible errors are all my fault. And thanks to everyone who has worked to make this exchange work. 
> 
> It's worth noting that I started this long before Liam and Sophia broke up and I couldn't bring myself to write them out of the story.

When Louis answers the door Nick finally understands why Harry begged so hard for Nick to come check on him.

“He’s got a sprained wrist and bronchitis,” Harry had said. “They sent him home.”

“Wow,” Nick had said, “They sent him home. They didn’t even send you home for your throat thing.” He means the three months Harry spent on vocal rest puffing on steroid inhalers and albuterol and drinking hundreds of cups of hot water with honey, only to go on stage and pretend every note wasn’t ripping his throat open. Harry had been miserable. In the end he had found an acupuncturist in a strip mall is Kentucky who he swore cured him in three sessions. Louis must be really sick if they sent him home from the tour.

“Please,” Harry said, “Everyone we know is on tour and his mum can’t get down this week. I’m worried about him, Nick.”

Nick couldn’t imagine Louis, in all his lionhearted prickly-mischievous pop-stardom, as the object of worry, but Harry sounded genuinely concerned and his voice still had the weird rattle from his throat thing, so Nick gave in. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll look in on him after the show.”

“Thank you,” Harry said, and Nick laughed because that was his pop star voice, thank you for the interview, thank you for coming to our show, thank you for checking on my sick pet dragon of a bandmate. “I’ll bake you something when I get back, anything you want.”

“And when’ll that be, then?” Nick asked, “one hundred years?”

“No,” Harry said, all drawn out and play-hurt. “I think like, two months?”

And that is how Nick ends up knocking on Louis’s door with a bag of soup, and pills, and fancy moisturizing tissues.

When Louis opens the door he looks terrible. He’s pale and flushed at once, and he has one arm pinned to his chest in a sling. He’s trying to hold onto a blanket that’s half wrapped around his shoulders, half trailing on the floor behind him with the other even as he opens the door. He has the shuffling, bent over gait of an old woman, and Nick can see why they sent him home, and why Harry wanted him to make sure he’s alright so badly, because Louis looks like Hell.

“Hi, Louis, you okay?” Nick says as he invites himself into Louis’s house.

“Not particularly, no,” Louis says in the raspy whisper of laryngitis.

Louis’s house isn’t as messy as Nick had expected. He can see Louis’s spotless dining room from the doorway, a long blonde wood table with a centerpiece of candles and succulents, sturdy mismatched chairs, a handful of photographs on the walls Nick is too far away to see properly. He suspects it’s clean from disuse, not care, but it’s still unexpected.

Louis’s living room is covered over in the layer of mess that sickness creates. There’s a small mountain of biohazardous tissues on the floor by the sofa. Louis has made a nest on the couch with what might be all the blankets in the house. There’s an empty body-shaped cavern in the middle where he must have been laying before he got up to let Nick in. There’s an empty soup bowl on the ground next to the couch, which Nick supposed must be there in case Louis is sick.

“That’s a bit small, isn’t it,” He asks, pointing at the bowl.

Louis rolls his eyes, sharp, even as he’s re-cocooning himself in three squishy duvets. “I’m doing the best I can here, Nick. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m a bit poorly, actually.”

As soon as he finishes speaking, Nick learns why the bowl is there because Louis starts coughing an awful hacking cough, like he’s trying to cough out his stomach and his lungs. It goes on and on and Nick can’t figure out what to do except squeeze himself onto the edge of the couch next to Louis’s head and rub his back in slow circles after helping him sit up. He thinks he’s probably learned it from seeing one of his friends with their baby, and there’s a thought he can never tell Louis. Louis’ shirt is hot and sweat-damp under his hand. Louis’s doubled over, coughing into his knees, and that can’t be sanitary, but Nick doesn’t say anything. After a moment, Louis grabs Nick’s knee hard, even as he’s still coughing. 

“Tell me if you can’t breath,” Nick says, and then realizes how dumb that is.

Eventually Louis stops and sits back up a little bit. Nick can see the muscles of his abdomen spasming, like he’s fighting down the urge to keep coughing, but instead he lifts a tissue up to his mouth and spits into it. It’s oddly delicate for something that’s so revolting, something about his wrists, Nick thinks. Louis glances at the contents of the tissue, crumples it up, and throws it on the floor with the rest of them. It’s revolting. Nick is revolted.

“I’ll just bring you a bin,” Nick says. Louis rolls his eyes at him. When Nick asks where his trash is, Louis just gestures vaguely over his shoulder.

Nick eventually finds Louis’s kitchen. It’s as clean is his dining room, but sparse, not manicured. The sink is full of used mugs and there’s a red enamel kettle on the stove. Nick peers over the edge of Louis’s sink at his mug collection. He figures he may as well indulge in a little bit of low key snooping. He doesn’t want to touch Louis’s diseased dishes, but he spots two One Direction mugs mixed in with his fancy pottery mugs. There’s a little pile of books on Louis’s kitchen island, all three of them dog eared and a little bit ragged looking, and who knew Louis Tomlinson liked to read. Nick ties off the half full bag that’s in Louis’s kitchen trash and replaces it with a new one.

He puts the empty bin next to the couch. “There,” he says. “I’m not touching your dirty, infected tissues though.”

“I’m not contagious anymore. I’m on antibiotics,” Louis rasps at him, ignoring the revolting mound of tissues. “What did you bring me?” He’s poking at Nick’s bag of sick supplies.

“Soup,” Nick says, and pulls out the container. “They didn’t have chicken noodle, and I didn’t know what you liked, so I got broccoli cheddar.”

“Dairy is bad for phlegm,” Louis says, like he discusses phlegm production daily. And actually, with how much time he spends with Harry, and Harry’s penchant for oversharing, he very well might.

“Oh, um, sorry.” Nick says. “I brought tissues and pills too. I didn’t know what you needed so I brought everything.” He up-ends the bag onto Louis’s coffee table and tries to contain the bottles as they roll everywhere. He really did buy one of everything that said ‘cold remedy’ at the store. Cough suppressants and nose sprays and vitamin C tablets. He picks up two bottles at random and waves them in Louis’s direction.

“I’ve got cough stuff,” Louis says, “and antibiotics. Actually, while you’re here, you may have noticed I’m down an arm,” Louis moves his shoulder a bit like he’s trying to point out his sling to Nick. Nick laughs just a little bit. “And they put all my medicine in those childproof bottles, and I can’t get them open.They gave me the first dose at their office, but do you think you could --” Louis trails off and looks over his shoulder in what must be the direction of his medicine. 

“Yeah,” Nick says, “I’ve got two arms and between the two of us we’re definitely cleverer than a child.”

Louis smiles and wriggles his way out of his blanket-nest. It stays puffed up in an empty cavern around the place where his body was. There’s something oddly sweet about it.

Louis leads him into his bathroom. It’s huge and it connects from the hallway through to what must be his bedroom. It’s the first room of Louis’s house that looks as cluttered and messy as Nick expected. The counter and the top of the toilet tank are both cluttered with ninety million bottles of hair product. Nick is honestly a bit impressed. That’s some dedication. He kind of wants to nose around, sniff some stuff, see if Lou buys him anything good. Louis turns and gives him a sharp look when he can’t help but huff out a tiny laugh at how utterly Louis it all is.

“It’s an impressive collection,” Nick says as Louis fiddles with his medicine cabinet. “People are always asking our Hazza about his hair when obviously they should be asking you.”

Louis laughs at that, which sets off another bout of pained coughing. He grimaces after he finishes and puts two bottles in Nick’s hands. One of pills and one of thick cough syrup.

Nick cracks the syrup open. It smells like bananas and butterscotch and vomit all at once. He asks Louis, “how much of this do you get?”

“Um,” Louis says, “It’s just there,” he leans around Nick to try to look at the bottle. They’re standing about five feet away from each other, on opposite sides of Louis’s bathroom, practically. Louis twists his good arm to point out the dosing information without touching Nick.

It reminds Nick of just how much of a stranger Louis is to him. He’s seen a lot of pictures of him in magazines. He knows Louis’s face so well. And he’s heard a lot of stories about him, mostly from Harry, and Nick and Louis have a lot of mutual friends. But he and Louis have never been friends. They’ve gotten past the point of standing awkwardly far apart and contorting themselves to avoid any suggestion of social intimacy.

Nick’s feelings about Louis have never been as simple as dislike. Nick doesn’t know Louis well enough to dislike him. But he’s a little bit afraid of Louis’s temper, and he enjoys the performance of hating him. He mostly hates Louis for Harry’s benefit, because he doesn’t spend enough time with Louis, or thinking about Louis, even, to have any real opinion on the man himself.

Nick pours out a little cup of sickly yellow cough syrup for Louis. “Should I leave the cap off so you can get it yourself next time?” Nick asks. It’s meant to be helpful, but he’s worried after he says it that he sounds patronizing.

Louis squints at the bottle then says, “Better put it in the kitchen so it doesn’t spill.”  
Not much later Nick goes home. He walks his dog and makes tea and generally continues living his life knowing his good deed for the day is done. Oh and maybe tomorrow too. It wasn’t that awful. Less awful than he expected. Louis is never quite as awful as Nick expects, but Louis isn’t his friend and he has things to do. He’s very busy actually.

~~

A little after noon the next day Harry texts him “When are you checking on Louis today?”

“I wasn’t going to,” Nick sends back.

“Nick.” Harry sends. And Nick can hear how he’d say it in his head, all drawn out and sad. It would have worked on Nick if Harry had been there, gently annoying him until he agreed, and it works on him in text too, honestly. “He’s lonely” Harry adds when Nick doesn’t agree right away. 

“Fine,” Nick sends.

After Louis lets him in Nick snaps a picture of the two of them together to send to Harry. Louis looks unbelievably haggard in the picture. Dark circles under his eyes and bright cheeks.

Nick lingers by the hallway and looks at Louis across the room where he’s poking at the container of soup Nick brought. He looks less awful in real life than he did on Nick’s phone, but he still looks feverish and tired.

“It’s white bean and rosemary,” Nick tells Louis. “Are they taking care of you? Like, you’ve seen a doctor, right?” He asks a moment later.

“Yes, I’ve seen a doctor, Nick. You’ve seen my medicine.” Louis holds up the container of soup. “Can you help me with this?”

Nick takes the container out of Louis’s hand and follows him into his kitchen. He pours it into a bowl until Louis stops him.

“Do you want some?” Louis asks, pushing the half-full container at Nick. “I think my bread is still okay too,” He adds. He tries to open his bread box one handed and fails.

Nick agrees and checks the bread for him, and decides it’s probably fine. Nick was never that great at judging that kind of thing, but he thinks it looks fine.

They eat on Louis’s couch. Nick makes three trips from the kitchen with soup and tea and bread. Nick would rather have not eaten within eyeshot of Louis’s infectious tissues pile, which has somehow doubled in size since he last saw it, but Louis is sick and tired and demanding so they end up on his couch, much too close to his biohazards.

Louis has Scandal paused on his TV.

“Olivia’s great isn’t she?” Nick asks and Louis blinks at him confused until he gestures towards the screen with his spoon.

“Oh,” Louis says. “Yeah. I like Abby best though.”

Nick nods, he can see that.

“Do you want to watch?” Louis asks.

“Alright,” Nick says. It’s the middle of an episode. Someone with a bomb vest is asking for something.

Louis finishes his soup before Nick even though he had to stop three times to cough violently. It’s pretty good soup, Nick thinks. A bit salty, but fragrant with herbs. After Louis finishes, he tucks his arms into his cocoon of blankets and draws them up until only his nose and eyes are visible. Nick smiles a little bit at him, just a quick flash, because he looks like such a sick little kid.

“What?” Louis says, grumpy and muffled.

“Looks cozy,” Nick says as conversationally as he can manage. It’s cute. Louis the blanket lump is cute.

“I’m sick,” Louis says, like a petulant child, and nudges Nick with a mystery limb from inside his blankets.

They don’t say anything for the rest of the episode. The next one starts automatically and neither of them stops it. Louis falls asleep a few minutes in and slumps awkwardly half on Nick’s shoulder and half between it and the back of his sofa. He’s heavy and he smells like sickness, all stale air and fever sweat, but Nick can’t bring himself to wake him up. Nick lets the episode play softly in the background and sneaks his phone out to text Harry a picture of Louis’s shoulder. He considers live tweeting Louis’s nap, but decides to live-text it to Harry instead.

“Your miniature lion is sleeping on me,” he sends.

“I’m probably infected now.”

“He snores.”

“Do the fans know he snores?”

“I think he’s drooling.”

Harry doesn’t respond. Nick gave up trying to keep track of Harry’s movements around the world ages ago. It could be four in the morning for him, Nick wouldn’t know.

Nick is enjoying complaining to Harry, playing up his misery at being treated as a pillow for one Louis Tomlinson, sick, surly teen icon. He likes testing the limits of Harry’s saintly patience, finding exactly where he’ll break and point out that Nick is being obnoxious or maybe stomp his feet. Nick always feels like he’s won once Harry starts stomping like a child. Nick’s enjoying faking annoyed, but he doesn’t really mind Louis’s warm, solid weight on his back. It reminds him a bit of watching TV with Pig. The way Pig’ll treat Nick’s whole body as available for her comfort is very similar to how Louis is crumpled against him. The warm smush of their weight is the same too. And there’s another thought to never tell Louis.

The episode ends and Nick pauses the TV before the next one starts. The movement must jostle Louis because he extracts himself delicately from where he’s pressed against Nick.

Louis tries to discreetly wipe at the drool on his face, but Nick knows what he’s doing. “Sorry,” Louis says after a silent moment. “The cough stuff knocks me out.”

“It’s fine,” Nick says, because it really is. Then he adds, “You missed a good episode. Olivia kissed Fitz in the White House garden. Very romantic.”

Louis wrinkles his nose. “Gross. Why would anyone kiss Fitz.”

Louis is right, of course, Fitz is intolerable. 

“I’m going to head home, I think,” Nick says after Louis rearranges all his blankets around himself. “Will you be alright on your own?”

Louis rolls his eyes, “yes, Nick, I’ll be alright on my own. I’m sick, not a child.”

“Well,” Nick says, “the childproof lids did keep you out.”

~~

Nick doesn’t need Harry to tell him to check on Louis the next day. He shows up with yet another package of soup and a huge bottle of ginger-ale.

“They had chicken noodle this time.” Nick says. “Now that I’ve got you the right kind of soup you’ll finally be cured.”

Louis manages to summon up a bit of a cheer, but ruins it by coughing so hard he has to sit down. Nick stands over him as he curls further and further over in on himself. Louis is gasping in breaths in between coughs. It sounds painful.

“I’m going to get you some water, okay?” Nick asks, because he has to do something. Louis sounds like he’s going to cough himself apart.

Louis doesn’t respond, so Nick fetches him a big glass of tap water. He has some vague idea about room temperature water being better for the body, probably something Harry told him. Something about metabolism and core temperature. He doesn’t know, but maybe it’ll help Louis.

When Nick gets back, Louis is still coughing, but they’re small, shuddering coughs, like he doesn’t even have enough air to cough, not anymore. He takes the water from Nick, though. He tries to drink it slowly, but he coughs through his mouthful of water. It should be disgusting, Louis spewing water out into his lap, but mostly it’s terrifying and heartbreaking.

“Do you need me to call an ambulance?” Nick asks.

Louis shakes his head. He rubs at his own sternum while he coughs. Nick doesn’t know what to do. He was never any good in a crisis. He can feel a tiny shrill noise building up between his ribs because he cannot watch Louis die here today. He can’t watch anyone die, but he especially can’t watch one fourth of One Direction die, like something from the worst kind of sensationalist music documentary. He just can’t.

Finally Louis stops coughing and sucks in a deep, slow, raspy breath. He throws himself down on his back on the couch.

“I fucking hate this. I hate being sick,” Louis whispers. He sounds like he means to be yelling but his voice is too wrecked to manage anything more than an angry whisper. He rubs at his lower abdomen. “I’ve been coughing so much my coughing muscles are all sore.”

“Do you want to try water again?” Nick asks. He just wants to help, somehow help.

Louis nods, and sits up slowly. He makes a face at the movement. He drinks slowly but without stopping. Nick puts his hand on Louis’s back. He could use some comfort himself, honestly. That was scary.

After Louis drains the glass he grins at Nick. “Well that was embarrassing,” he says. His voice sounds a little better.

“That was terrifying, Louis,” Nick says. He sounds squawky to his own ears.

They sit for a long time, quiet in Louis’s living room. Nick gets Louis a second glass of water, and eventually Louis turns on the TV. He puts a documentary about deep sea creatures on quietly while Nick gets him soup. Louis makes him take a bowl of it too. Between the two of them, they finish off the package. Nick is suddenly concerned about Louis’s ability to make food one-handed.

“What do you eat when I’m not here?” Nick asks.

“I do okay,” Louis says. “Between delivery and my excellent cooking skills, I manage somehow.”

Louis puts his feet in Nick’s lap after they finish their soup. Not even in an obnoxious way, he doesn’t kick Nick in the stomach or wiggle his toes or anything. He just puts them there like Nick is as good as a pillow.

Nick puts one hand tentatively on Louis’s ankle. He feels like that’s a level of intimacy they’ve reached now that he’s seen Louis almost cough to death. Louis doesn’t say anything about Nick’s hand he just nestles deeper into the couch, so Nick leave his hand where it is. He knows that Louis can be like this, docile and cuddly and sweet. He’s seen Louis put his head on his bandmate’s chests during interviews, sit in their laps, tangle their legs together. He knew Louis could be like this, but he had never seen it before in person, never been the object of Louis’s gentleness. It’s nice. It’s nicer than he would have imagined.

Nick watches a huge squid drift through the dark water of the deep ocean. “Do you think you can eat those?” He asks Louis.

Louis is massaging his stomach and ribs like they ache. They probably do with how hard he was coughing. “I think,” Louis says thoughtfully, “I think you can eat anything you can fit in your mouth, it just might not be a good idea.”

Nick laughs at that.

~~

Nick stops at a pharmacy on his way to Louis’s house, thinking about Louis rubbing at his sore ribs and stomach. He knows that there are chemical cold packs, but he isn’t sure if chemical hot packs exist. It turns out they do, who knew. He buys one of each of the three kinds and shoves them in the bag with the soup.

“Here,” he says handing the boxes to Louis. “Got you these. For your coughing muscles.”

Louis takes the boxes as well as he can with his one good hand. One of them goes flying to the ground. Nick picks it up for him. “Want to try it?” He asks.

“Okay,” Louis says. He peers over Nick’s shoulder while Nick reads the instructions.

“It’s like a big velcro belt.” Nick says. He opens the package and shakes it to activate the heat packs. “You just put it around your middle.” He says, handing it to Louis.

Louis holds the hot pack with his one hand and tilts it a little bit. “Um,” he says.

“Oh,” Nick says, “Right.” He takes the heat pack from Louis and holds it out in front of him. “Okay?” He asks, before pressing it up to Louis’s stomach. It has a big wide part which he puts on Louis’s abs and two velcro bands he wraps around his back.

Louis does a little spin after Nick gets it all settled. It looks absurd, but Nick doesn’t say so.

“Feels weird,” Louis says after a moment, “but weird.”

Nick makes Louis and himself bowls of soup and fiddles with Louis’s medicine for him.

Today Louis has been watching reruns of America’s Next Top Model, as far as Nick can tell from the screen frozen on his TV.

“Have you ever met Tyra?” Louis asks over his soup.

“Yeah,” Nick says. “She’s disappointingly normal, honestly. I wanted to ask her to give me my picture but I thought it’d be too weird.”

“There are two radio DJs in front of me,” Louis says, but he doesn’t even try to sound like Tyra, he mostly sounds like his old game show host persona. “But only one picture in my hands. The DJ whose picture I don’t have in my hands must,” he trails off and squints at Nick. “Is that right? Is that what she says? I think I’ve messed it up.”

Nick shrugs. “I think that was right.” It’s the kind of dreary, rainy afternoon that feels too soft for complicated jokes or sarcasm. Mostly Nick wants to curl up and watch the models try to pose with elephants and maybe take a nap.

“I was going to eliminate you anyway,” Louis says, not unkindly, like it isn’t very rude to imply Tyra would eliminate Nick from a DJ competition. He pulls his blanket up to his nose again.

Louis starts the show back up and falls asleep three episodes in. Nick is about to ask him what his power word would be if he were doing the bizarre shoot the models are doing on screen, but Louis slumps down against Nick’s shoulder just before he turns to ask.

It seems like Louis thinks it’s a good afternoon for a nap too.

Nick doesn’t have anything to do for the rest of the day, so he doesn’t stop himself from letting his eyes drift shut. He matches his breath up to Louis’s and falls upwards into the gravitational pull of sleep.

When Nick wakes up it’s dark outside and Louis’s head is on his chest and his left leg is asleep from the hip down.

He tries to shake his leg awake without dislodging Louis, but he must not do a great job because Louis stirs against him.

“Sorry,” Louis says without moving. “It’s the cough stuff.”

“It’s fine,” Nick says. He’s fallen asleep in weirder places with weirder people. “But you are cutting off blood to my leg.” He adds.

“Oh,” Louis says, “I can move. Here.”

Nick hadn’t noticed how warm Louis’ blankets, and Louis himself, were keeping him, but when Louis sits up he takes his blankets with him, and Nick is suddenly shivering.

“I should head home,” Nick tells Louis. “My dog has probably eaten my pillow by now. Actually what time is it?” He hunts around for a clock and eventually finds the time blinking on Louis’s DVD player. 6:17. That was a two and a half hour nap then. “She’s definitely destroyed something.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. He still looks half asleep.

“Do you need anything?” Nick asks. “Medicine all set?”

Louis nods, and when Nick gets off the couch he sprawls out over the whole thing, wrapped in his tangle of blankets. He’s blinking slow and heavy, sleepy.

When Nick turns around to say goodbye, Louis’s eyes are already shut. Nick pats him on what he thinks is probably his shoulder or his elbow as a goodbye.

~~

“They’re sending me back tomorrow,” Louis says over soup the next day. They had been out of everything reasonable at the cafe so Nick had ended up buying butternut apple soup and hoping for the best. The best turned out to be bland but not inedible.

“It’s my nursing, isn’t it?” Nick smiles at Louis next to him.

“Oh definitely,” Louis agrees. He does look better, Nick thinks. Nick couldn’t tell you what the difference between a healthy flush and the flush of a fever is, but somehow Louis looks flushed but not feverish. He hasn’t been coughing as much either, Nick thinks, not since the time Nick had almost called an ambulance. He still looks tired, but Nick suspects Louis’ whole band will look tired until they finally get their break.

“You’ll tell Harry what a good nursemaid I was, won’t you?” He asks. “He said he’d bake me something.”

“Oh, it’s all for Harry’s baked goods isn’t it,” Louis says. Nick can’t tell if he’s joking or offended.

“Maybe if you play up how good I was,” Nick says, as gently as he can, “we can get him to bake me two things and one can be for you,” Nick says. “Tell him I, like, spoon fed you broth, or something.”

Louis smiles at that, a tiny sharp toothed grin. “Has he ever made you his cinnamon rolls? They’re amazing.”

“Do you have much more left before the break?” Nick asks. He does his best to capitalize The Break with his voice, the way Harry always does in texts.

“Just a month and a half, more or less. Two months, maybe.” Louis says.  

“That’s not much at all,” Nick says.

“What are you doing with your break, then?” Nick asks. He knows it’s a bad idea as soon as he says it. It makes him sound like a journalist. He may as well have asked if Louis’ band was breaking up, honestly.

Louis just shrugs, and looks away, and picks at the hem of his jeans. “I’ve got some stuff, but mostly,” He trails off and shrugs again.

Nick nods and watches the movement of Louis’s fingers.

“Liam’s getting married. Like, secretly.”

“Do you think I’m invited?” Nick asks. “I bet Liam throws an amazing party.”

“He does,” Louis says. “You probably are. I could ask him. You know what Liam’s like.”

Nick nods, although he isn’t completely sure what Louis means. “I think Harry’s going to LA,” Nick says. It’s hard to get concrete answers from Harry because he has invitations and opportunities all around the world. But Nick half expects him to ignore everyone who wants him to write them songs or act in their movies and end up running a chocolate shop in Jakarta or something.

“That’s his plan, yeah,” Louis says. “And Niall’s going back to Ireland, so it’ll just be me.”

Nick has a hard time believing that Louis will be completely alone in London. He has his family and his friends. A lot of his friends are probably tied up with touring, but not all of them. He won’t have any trouble finding people to watch football with him, or to come to his parties. But Nick can’t stop himself from saying “I’ll be around if you get lonely, you know.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Okay.”

~~

Harry throws a giant end-of-tour start-of-break party once they’re done with the tour. As far as Nick can tell he’s invited everyone he’s ever met, and maybe some people he hasn’t. When Nick gets there, Harry is draped over the back of a tall androgynous woman whispering into her neck. Nick leaves him to his flirting. Harry will come find him later, or Nick will find Harry.

Louis and Simon Cowell are talking in Harry’s hallway. Nick catches Louis eye and gets a friendly grin in return. 

Niall corners Nick by Harry’s sink.

“So I hear we owe you our thanks,” Niall says and Nick has no idea what he’s talking about. He doesn’t even know Niall, not really. “You single handedly saved our Louis from dying of consumption.” Niall grins at him, and Nick is sure that wasn’t what happened. “Do you know when they’re giving you your metal? We’re all coming to the ceremony.”

Nick doesn’t have a chance to respond before Niall is drifting away in a passing crowd of people.

When Liam finds him half an hour later, drops to his knees, and kisses the air above Nick’s feet, Nick begins to suspect he is being had.

He had been talking to Lou, she was telling him a long rambling story about the internet which he can barely follow, but now she’s just staring at him.

“Thank you,” Liam says, still kneeling on the ground in front of Nick, “Thank you so much.”

“What was that?” Lou asks after Liam has left.

“Harry, probably,” Nick answers.

“Oh yeah,” Lou says, “I’m supposed to tell you you’re a national hero.”

That’s how it goes all night. Harry’s house is full of people who need to express their gratitude in absurd, overblown ways.

Finally, a little past midnight Harry wraps his arms around Nick’s shoulders from behind. He whispers “My hero” into Nick’s ear, kisses his cheek, and drifts away like smoke.

Louis finds Nick towards the end of the party, late into the morning when Nick has had time to get drunk and then sober up a bit. Nick is sitting on Harry’s couch, listening to three people he doesn’t know trying to remember Julie Andrews’ complete filmography. They’re forgotten The Princess Diaries 2, but Nick isn’t going to tell them.

Louis throws himself down next to Nick and nudges him with his shoulder.

“Hey” Nick says.

“Do you feel suitably thanked yet?” Louis asks, and nudges Nick again, then time with his elbow.

Nick turns to look at him. “It was you,” he yells. He can’t believe he had been blaming Harry when all this time it was Louis.

Louis just smiles and shrugs, all fake humble and drunk and sweet. “Harry helped.” He had known that they did this sometimes, the whole band coming together to prank someone, or make the world a little bit odder, that was how Harry liked to describe it. But he has never been on the receiving end before. Never seen the combined force of One Direction working together.

“You know Liam kissed my feet?” Nick asks.

“Did he?” Louis asks, “he said would but I didn’t think he could take the germs.”

“He did like, above,” Nick says.

Louis nods and knocks his elbow against Nick’s side in an irregular rhythm.

~~

Louis invites Nick to his house a week and a half after Harry leaves for America. Nick brings the last of the Florentines Harry made him and paws through Louis’s DVD collection. Louis has an odd mix of low-brow action movies and old romantic comedies. He’s done this before, in the week Louis was sick, but it’s something to do. He feels oddly shy. It’s the first time he’s spent any time with Louis as a friend, as his friend.

Louis makes them tea and they eat Harry’s Florentines and watch “You’ve Got Mail.”

Louis is fidgety. He tucks his toes underneath Nick’s thigh and wiggles them, and then puts his feet in Nick’s lap, puts one on the ground, lays down on the couch, sits up, and puts both his feet back under Nick’s thigh. It’s like he’s forgetting the few days he spent sleeping on Nick, like they’re strangers again.

“Louis, honestly, just come here,” Nick says, after the third time Louis wiggles his toes against the underside of Nick’s thigh.

Louis huffs like Nick is being bossy, but he tucks himself under Nick’s arm when Nick offers it, and puts his head on Nick’s chest.

“Good?” Nick asks.

“Yeah,” Louis says.

Nick has seen this exact scene in a movie, he’s pretty sure. Something Harry loved with lots of swelling music and running through airports. At some point the strong-jawed male lead had tucked the heroine against his chest in just the same way Nick had just pulled Louis against him, his cheek to Nick’s shoulder. Nick could rub his own cheek on the top of Louis’s head, if he were so inclined, or breath in the scent of his hair. That was what the strong jawed male lead had done. The situation is similar enough to the one in the movie that it knocks Nick a little bit away from himself, away from the moment. He hadn’t considered falling for Louis before, but in the moment after Louis finally relaxes against Nick, Nick considers it for just a second. He doesn’t so much imagine bending to kiss the swirl of Louis’s hair as he imagines wanting to. 

Then he dismisses it. Nope. Definitely not falling for Louis, then. No swelling music, no chasing him through airports. None of that.

It’s odd, because Louis is handsome and fascinating, and Nick can easily imagine a slightly different world where Louis head on his chest makes his heart skip a beat. He could imagine, in that different world, wanting to keep some dear part of Louis just for himself. 

But that world isn’t the one Nick is living in now. Now, and here, he’s happy to curl up with Louis on his couch and listen to him complain about how stupid all the characters in movies always are. That’s what he wants with Louis, nothing else. 

~~

They go shopping together, and Louis mostly tries on the oddest and most misguided garments he can find. Somehow he ends up buying three bags worth of things for his family, while Nick feels selfish about the fancy periwinkle sweater he bought for himself. Louis stops to take pictures with fans outside, and Nick watches from a little ways back. He’s so kind with them, pulling dumb faces and giving real, sincere hugs. 

“You, Louis Tomlinson,” Nick says in the car back to his apartment, “are a nice person.” 

Louis shrugs. “I guess so, yeah,” he says.

~~

Liam gets married a few weeks later and Nick ends up going to the wedding as either Louis’s plus one or Harry’s. He’s not completely sure. He sits between then and they talk across him all evening long. He keeps trying to jump in, but they mostly ignore him, and honestly, it’s like they speak a different language sometimes. A language that developed in the isolation of their months and months of touring, like they’re their own tribe isolated on an island. He thinks they might be gossiping about the love-lives of some of the hundreds of people who make their livings running the One Direction Circus, or possibly they’re planning a prank. Nick honestly doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. 

It’s awful. Nick wants to write an article or something about what it’s like to be included in the inner circle of One Direction. He wants to reveal to the world the dirty secret of One Direction, that hanging out with them mostly involves being the object of pranks and trying to decipher the bizarre collection of in-jokes and abbreviations and personal slang that makes up a conversation between them. Because this is what One Direction’s army of fans dreams of, being where Nick is, listening to Louis and Harry and their unintelligible conversation

Nick mostly ends up making small talk with Liam’s cousin, who is seated across from him and studying some special kind of rocks at a university in Copenhagen, until Harry prods Nick in the ribs to reclaim his attention. 

“Come on, Nicholas, we’re dancing now,” Harry says, dragging Nick out of his very interesting conversation about niche metal genres and their respective philosophical origins. 

Liam has gone delightfully low key with his wedding in a lot of ways. They’re in a tent in the back yard of a giant yellow house. Sophia is wearing a sundress and converse. It’s probably a very expensive sundress, and they’re probably custom converse, but its not a ball gown. Instead of hiring a DJ, Liam had asked his guests to send him good dancing songs. Nick had agonized over his choices, until Louis told him that Liam would feel obligated to pretend to like whatever everyone suggested, so Nick should be as awful as possible. That’s what Louis was doing anyway. 

So Nick sent him mostly good, solid dance pop, but he snuck in one Estonian polka song, just to be safe. 

All of that means that the mix of songs is being decided by the shuffle algorithm on Sophia’s old pale blue ipod. Right now it’s playing ‘We Found Love,’ and Nick lets Harry drag him out onto the dance floor and tries to coordinate himself as well as possible with Harry’s happy flailing dance moves.

Louis joins them a few songs later and Louis is a much better dancer than Harry, more fluid, less likely to hit Nick in the face with a hand he lost track of. He dances in a goofy best-mates-wedding kind of way, with a half full beer in one hand. It isn’t seductive, it isn’t for anyone to watch. It’s just a fully body expression of happiness, and sharp-toothed mischief, and being slightly drunk and surrounded by friends. 

Nick kisses somewhere between Louis’s cheek and his temple between songs. He’s just really happy, really happy to be part of the strange little world that Louis creates around himself. Happy, and he needs somewhere to put it. 

Harry smiles placidly at the two of them. “Knew you’d get along,” he says over the music. 

“Shut up, Harold,” Louis says sweetly, just as Nick smacks a showy kiss on Harry’s forehead. 

~~

Harry spends a few days at Nick’s house before heading back to his adventures. It’s nice, and not just because he bakes one million batches of cookies. Nick’s house smells amazing, all the time, like cinnamon and melting butter and chocolate. Harry is always such an easy person to share a space with. He does whatever Nick does, is happy to sit and watch Nick do things, amuses himself when Nick is busy. 

Louis invites himself over a lot to see Harry. Louis is not easy to share space with. Louis demands attention. He spreads out mess and loud cursing and laughter everywhere he goes like an aura, or like smoke filling a room. 

Nick comes home from work a lot to find the two of them sprawled all over his house, sometimes talking, sometimes watching movies, sometimes working quietly next to each other. It’s sweet. Nick feels a little bit like he should hang a sign on his front door that says ‘Nick Grimshaw’s Home For Codependent Pop Stars,’ but it’s sweet. 

~~

One day Nick comes home from work and finds Harry pacing across his living room, talking on his cell phone, eyebrows furrowed. Louis is on his couch, typing something on his phone, glancing up occasionally at Harry. 

Nick flops down on the couch next to Louis. 

“Hello,” Nick whispers. 

“Hey,” Louis whispers back.

“What’s all this about,” Nick asks him when he doesn’t volunteer an explanation. 

“A newspaper wrote that he’s converted to scientology,” Louis whispers. “He’s talking to the lawyers.”

Across the room Harry scowls at them and covers his other ear. 

“Kitchen, then,” Nick whispers to Louis. 

There’s a little pile of scones on a plate on Nick’s island that weren’t there when he left. “Those are amazing,” Louis says when he notices Nick looking at them. 

Nick helps himself to one. It is amazing. He was expecting it to be sweet, but its savory, filled with crips little bits of something. 

“They are good,” Nick agrees. 

“Told you, didn’t I.” Louis says. He kicks a little bit at the legs of the bar stool Nick is sitting on. He seems like he’s angling for a fight and Nick doesn’t know why. 

Louis keeps kicking at his stool while he finishes his scone. 

“Do you need something,” Nick asks. He tries to use his calm voice, even though Louis is a nightmare sometimes. 

“Are we friends,” Louis asks after another minute of kicking. 

“Course we are,” Nick says. Because they are, they absolutely are. 

Louis nods, and then says, “You and Harry have a whole thing,” he gestures around the room, like Nick and Harry’s friendship is on display all over his house. Which actually, it kind of is, if Nick thinks about it. There’s Harry himself, and the scones, and Harry’s big suitcase on his floor, Harry’s shoes by his door. But there are also pictures of Harry on his fridge. Harry gave him a good handful of the art on his walls. Harry was with him when he bought a lot of the little knickknacks he keeps scattered around his house. When he was trying to decide if he wanted a French dot duvet cover or a plain one, Harry was the person he texted for an opinion. He bought his candles after smelling the same ones in one of Harry’s flats. Harry is everywhere in his house, now that Louis’s pointed it out. 

“I wasn’t sure.” Louis adds quietly after a minute.

And like that, somehow, Louis becomes one of Nick’s people. Nick gives him a key to his house and Louis falls asleep on his couch sometimes. Nick even adds Louis to the list of people who know Pig’s daily routine in case he needs to enlist someone for puppy-sitting. 

More oddly, at least from Nick’s perspective, Nick seems to become one of Louis’ people, at least as far as Nick can figure out. Louis texts him constantly, half whiney, overly specific complains about his life, and half witty observations about the world. 

It’s nice. Nick finds that somehow he enjoys having Louis showing up at his front door every so often with bags of food and DVDs and occasionally bottles of alcohol. He likes watching movies with Louis and arguing about music and TV and mostly everything else. 

And Nick would never have imagined he would learn to enjoy fighting with Louis, but, he thinks, Louis argues with his friends the same way Harry tells long pointless stories or Nick spins out in more and more bizarre jokes. 

They’re watching some truly terrible American rom-com. Louis has somehow ended up with his head on Nick’s thigh and his feet tucked behind Nick’s heels. 

They’ve been snarking over the movie the whole time. The costumes, the terrible early 2000’s adult contemporary soundtrack, the way the characters are obviously middle class, but no one ever seems to go to work. 

“You know I’m ace, right?” Louis asks out of nowhere in the middle of a scene. He doesn’t lift his head off of Nick’s thigh. “Like, this isn’t me coming on to you, you’re just a comfortable pillow.”

“Yes, Louis,” Nick says, his voice droning like they had discussed this one hundred times, “I know you’re asexual.”

“How do you know that?” Louis asks, and Nick has to roll his eyes just a little bit at how quickly his tone changed. 

“Do you remember Harry’s big New Years party?” Nick asks, even though he already knows Louis must not. “The one last year. Or I guess this year. Whichever.”

“I remember it,” Louis says, “I’m not sure I remember all of it, though, or how this is relevant.”

Nick stifles a nervous laugh into a weird little muffled sound. He doesn’t exactly feel guilty that he hasn’t already told Louis about the time he came out to him, drunk on New Years, but he does wish he had managed to find a way to remind Louis about it earlier. “I think you were pretty --” he pulls an odd face to try to express ‘drunk off your ass on champagne.’

Louis nods like he gets it. “I had a bit to drink. It was New Years, after all, and Harry’s money.” He flashes a sharp nervous kind of grin at his own joke.

“Well, while you had had a bit you told me you were asexual.” Nick says.

It was a bit more involved than that. Louis had come thundering out onto Harry’s back porch clutching a tea mug of champagne and throwing a grotesque expression over his shoulder at whatever conversation he had fled.

Nick had given Louis a tipsy version of his best friendly grin. He felt warm and sleepy with champagne and the hour. Harry’s whole house was filled with people who Nick knew and loved so much that he had had to come outside just to get some space from the overwhelming warmth in his abdomen. “Someone insulting your footie team?” Nick asked, because he even loved Louis in that moment.

Louis huffed at him, somewhere between a laugh and a shudder. “I’m just. I’m just so ace.” Louis had said. Then he had laughed at himself. “Not like, ace of spades, like asexual. I’m so asexual.” Nick couldn’t figure out Louis’s tone. He was tripping over words, rushed and emphatic and so drunk.

“Oh?” Nick had asked because even tipsy with Louis ranting drunkenly at him, Nick was good at smalltalk.

“Liam and Sophia kept snogging. Everywhere. It was rude, honestly. No one wants to see that, Liam. Do people really like that? People can’t really like that.” Louis said. He took a tiny aristocratic sip of champagne. “I’ve had a bit to drink,” He added afterwards.

“Lou, I’ve definitely seen you kiss Harry.” Nick had said, and it was true. Most recently, Nick had seen Louis plant a big dramatic kiss on Harry, just after midnight, after Harry had finished kissing the five different people who had wanted him for their New Years kiss. Even among his friends, Harry’s charm was a powerful force. And he was a nice kisser. Harry and Louis had made a show of it, Harry dipping Louis backwards like an old film.

“That’s just Harry though, isn’t it. It isn’t like,” Louis said, gesturing wildly with his champagne mug. “It isn’t like I want to fuck him. It’s just cause kissing is nice and Harry’s nice to kiss. I don’t want to fuck him.” Louis said, drunk and slightly off the normal tempo of conversation, and then looked thoughtful for a moment. “Don't want to fuck anyone.”

“It that a thing, then?” Nick had asked, too drunk to stop himself from being nosey.

“Of course that’s a thing, Nick. Honestly, it’s 2014. 2015.” Louis had said, huffy and slurring.

Nick hadn’t known what to say to that, so he had just sipped his vodka and ginger-ale and listened as Louis ranted increasingly incoherently. Nick’s memory is a little bit fuzzy about this bit, but he distinctly remembers Louis leaning backwards on the railing of Harry’s deck, narrowing his eyes and whispering “So ace,” at Nick at least three times.

Nick tells Louis the high points of the conversation, including how completely drunk Louis had been and how charming Nick had been. He doesn’t tell Louis about the next afternoon when he had googled ‘asexual’ and fallen down into a spiral on tumblr and then livejournal, reading blogs written by asexual and aromantic people.

“So yes, I know you’re asexual,” Nick says. He can’t quite bring himself to say ace, even though he knows that’s an okay term to use, that would feel like giving too much away.

Louis narrows his eyes and glares up at Nick. It would be more dramatic if he weren’t still curled up half in Nick’s lap. “I was planning this big moment and you just took it from me.” Louis says. “Anti-climactic.” He adds, pronouncing the word syllable by syllable.

“Really it was you who took it from you,” Nick points out. “When you were drunk.”

Louis hides his face in Nick’s hip and laughs. “Shut up.” He says. “This was a big thing for me.” He sounds like he’s half joking and half something else, something closer to hurt or scared. Nick’s never really sure what his role is in moments like this, when someone has told him something deeply personal. Despite having come out countless times over his life, he never knows how to react when someone comes out to him. The internet says to thank them for their trust, but every time someone has done that to Nick he’s ended up having to fight down the urge to make fun of how serious they’re being. He supposes it might be different if he were younger and if he lived in the American South, or something, but as it is, he’s an adult, and a financially secure adult who’s out at his job and to the country at large too, and if someone doesn’t like that he’s gay, there’s not a lot they can do to hurt him, short of punching him, he supposes. He wonders if it’s like that for Louis, and he wonders if it’s okay for him to ask that.

“Sorry. I can pretend like I didn’t know?” Nick asks. He puts one of his hands on Louis’s upper back, because he really is sorry. “Oh. I had no idea,” He says, aiming for mild shock. “What a surprise.”

Louis makes a tiny muffled noise into Nick’s hip.

“Sorry,” Nick says again. For a long time he thought that Louis was always either joking or vulnerable, but he’s learning now that most of the time Louis is both. “Can I ask you a question?”

Louis nods, still face-first against Nick’s hip.

“Does anyone know?” Nick means Harry, mostly. Does Harry know, or is this a secret from everyone.

Louis rolls onto his back finally and looks up at Nick. “The boys.” He says. “My family.” Louis groans a little bit, then adds “And whoever else I told while I was drunk.”

Nick nods, “I think it was probably just me,” He says. “Can I ask you another question?”

Louis shrugs. Nick takes it as a yes.

“Are you, um” Nick says then stops. He gathers his nerves and starts again. “Are you aromantic too?”

“Oh, someone’s done his research,” Louis says. He pokes Nick in the stomach, playful and cheerful again now that he can tease Nick. Nick laughs and shoves Louis’s hands away. He feels like a member of One Direction, like in the old interviews where no one could follow the questions because Louis was too busy poking at their stomachs or nipples.

“Are you though,” Nick asks.

Louis tips his head back to look up at Nick, sideways, from where he’s sprawled out on the couch. “I don’t know,” he says. “There are all these things that people say romance means and I don’t understand why I can’t do what makes me happy and not have to describe it to them.” Louis looks sharp and annoyed and somehow vulnerable. He tries to fiddle with his fringe, but gravity is doing strange things to it and he mostly just ends up touching his forehead, tentative and gentle. “Like, what does romance even mean,” Louis adds, quieter and not really looking at Nick. 

Nick thinks about pointing out that Louis literally makes millions singing love songs, that he’s written some of those love songs himself.

But instead Nick turns the movie back on, and waits until Louis starts complaining about the male leads terrible choice in shoes before he joins back in, tearing into the horrible 2000’s trend of relaxed fit jeans on men and the way the actor keeps mispronouncing ‘Serendipity.’


End file.
